Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2353: Wouldn’t Trade Him for the World

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Ben Clemens banter about the FanGraphs crowdsourced trade value tool, the Josh Naylor, Ryan McMahon, and Gregory Soto trades, the outlook for Eugenio Suárez, the fascinating Spencer Jones, and the lack of production by MLB rookies this season, then (58:30) discuss Other Ben’s player rankings for the fourth annual trade […]

Hello and welcome to Episode 2353 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. Also with us is Other Ben, the secondary Ben of the many Bens and the constellation of effectively wild Ben Clemens of FanGraphs. Hello, Ben. Hello, secondary. That's great. I was worried I might be tertiary. How's it going?

Yeah. Well, I'm not going to give you primary. I will just be... Well, primary is out of play. So playing for second is what all of us other Bens are doing and I'll take it. Ben Alpha. Yeah. There are so many Bens in contention that being number two on that list, this podcast is concerned. That's, it's pretty impressive and you've earned it and you have earned it through your many appearances on this podcast, but also through your labors this week with your fourth crack at the FanGraphs annual Trade Value Series. So you have completed that labor yet again, and you have done your Trade Value Chat at fangraphs.com,

and now you do your Trade Value Chat on Effectively Wild. Though we can do a bit of banter before we get to that. But congrats on yet again rolling that stone up the hill. Thank you very much. It's already tilting back down for next year. Yeah. No, it is, you know, I'm very much. It's already tilting back down for next year. Yeah. No, it is, you know, I'm very happy that I get to do this.

It's pretty cool. I'm always very exhausted at the end of it. I wrote 25,000 words this week, I think I figured out. That's just a lot of words. Yeah. But, you know, I wouldn't trade it for the world. If Meg took it away from me, I'd probably cry. So I won't.

You're too easy of an edit for me to contemplate doing that. You put together your four trade value series. That's 25,000 per pop. That's a full longish book that you could just bind and sell. I don't know how many people would buy it, but a lot of people read it. A lot of people read it. I don't know if this quote is actually attributed to my namesake, Samuel Clemens, but I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long letter is definitely my style. Sorry, Meg. Yeah, well, that's the podcasting approach here at Effectively Wild as well.

I did wonder for a moment there whether you were actually outsourcing to the crowd, because there was crowdsourcing going on, or I guess it wasn't crowdsourcing, but it was, what was it, a sanity check, just a diversion for everyone, but the tool that I assume Sean Dullinor cooked up, is that correct? Yeah, Keane Narnison came up with the idea for it, and Sean shepherded it through development. Okay. A powerful dynamic duo there at FanCrafts behind the scenes. So the crowd source trade value tool that was certainly making the rounds among our listeners and our Patreon supporters and the

Discord group seems like it was well utilized. And when I first saw that, I thought, oh, is Ben just punting here? Is he just going to defer to the wisdom of crowds and it'll just be what FanCraft's readers think the trade value is? But was this just purely for their fun and amusement or was this something that you used to check your own ratings? Or is this kind of a trial run with an eye

toward incorporating into future incarnations of the series? I did not check my ratings with it. I used it a bunch. It was really fun. I guess Meg can tell you if the specifics of this are slightly off, but you'll be able to see your whole list come Monday. Yes. And my whole list and how your list compares to mine and the crowdsourced list. Yeah, I think that we do like to incorporate our readers into projects like this. The contract crowdsourcing that we do around free agency is perhaps the most notable example. And you know, like I think the people who read our site are pretty smart.

There is some wisdom to be gleaned from their impressions of things. When Ben is finalizing his free agent rankings, we have access to the results of the crowdsourcing in a way that we don't in a definitive way right now. In fact, depending on when you are all listening to this, if it is still on Friday, technically the tool is still live, so still have a couple hours to waste time on the site if you'd like to. But you know, we were, I think the idea here was to give our readers something fun to do to glean some insight into how they view the market. And you know, trade value machines, it's always a delicate proposition because I don't want

anyone to come away thinking, fan graph says this trade is garbage. And what they're really looking at is a very simple dollars per war kind of comparison. We and the rest of the industry has done a good job over the last several years of like, re-complicating people's understanding of that and bringing nuance to it and acknowledging that there is more to life than surplus value.

And there are trades that make very good sense for the teams that do them, even if they aren't coming out ahead from a surplus value perspective. So I don't want anyone to walk away thinking, like, FanGraph says this trade is garbage, because I don't think that that inspires particularly interesting conversation. But I do want to know what our readers think about

the relative value of players and kind of how they're gauging the market and we'll learn something interesting. It will not replace Ben or his incredibly detailed process when he's assembling the list. So much of what I do happened before this came out, basically. I was pretty honed in before we even released it. Maybe we'll change that next year a little. But honestly, the pitch behind this was Keaton showed me this, and he was like, hey, would this be fun?

I forget who it was, but it was like a Tani versus Judge. He was like, who you got? Pick the player you'd rather have. I was like, oh yeah, this is great. We should do this. You only need to look at one close decision and you're like, yeah, I'm in. Yeah, it was fun. And if anyone listening missed it and doesn't know what we're talking about, I'll link to it.

But if it's inactive, when you go to it, it was just sort of a head to head Elo rating sort of situation where you're just served matchups. And then each person does some number of matchups. And if you did, what was it? 150 to 200 was the guidance to determine your top 10. And then who knows, I'd be curious to know just the power users of this feature, how many they did.

But it was a lot. You limited it to a certain sample of players, right? There was a certain pool of crowds. So to get a little bit into the trade value series, it was basically like the people who were left on my spreadsheet. OK. Yeah. And then we threw in a few other names that it wasn't all. There are some names on there that were never going to be on the trade value list.

Right. But it was mostly just players I was considering. And maybe we can refine the universe's next year. I know one thing that we have definitely talked about is some techniques that can refine your top 10 a little faster. Yeah. Because it does have a tendency to leave one guy stuck in there, who you just happen to not get a lot of matchups of.

That's just unavoidable with the way we do it. We've talked about some statistical techniques to smooth those over. Yeah. To be honest with you, this thing came together super fast as just me and Keaton and Sean, but mainly them just bouncing ideas back and forth off of each other starting in like the middle of June and I was also on vacation for two weeks. So it came together really fast. And a very different time zone.

Yeah, I actually I talked a lot to Sean during that time, because the sun never goes down. I was in Norway. And I would just be up at one in the morning and like it's still bright out. He is fascinated by the northern lights or by the northern climbs where the light is up 24 hours a day. You can't see the northern lights in the summer. Bummer. I was just sending him pictures of what I was doing and then we'd talk trade value. But I think the tool will be better next year. I think it is already great. Those guys did a fantastic job. But we were just, we love the idea of a simple tool

like this that, like Meg said, doesn't get into like, well, if I project out his war to the seventh decimal for eight years and then compare the rate of interest on Korean bonds over that time, what I could get with an arbitrage, we really don't want to be sticking numbers on players. That's not fun. But hey, pick between these two dudes and just keep iterating. That's more fun to me. So, yeah.

Yeah, I think a lot of people had fun with it. Well, I look forward to seeing how it evolves and also to seeing how the crowds list stacks up to yours, which I guess I'll be able to read about. Yeah. I don't know if either of you knows yet or has perused those numbers. I guess it's not completely closed yet anyway. So too soon to say. I can't speak for Meg, but I was mostly marveling at the fact that we had like 900,000 total selections made. I'm going like, whoa. I am a little worried about what we've done for the employment

prospects of our readership. But beyond that, it does seem like people had good fun with this. So, yeah. Well, that was the goal. So that's good. OK, well, we'll get more into your trade value series. I'm now mulling over the possibilities of me in a land of perpetual daylight, which seems would be great.

Dangerous. Dangerous. So worried about that in you. Like that seems like you're going to be in a... I'd enable my worst inclinations. Although maybe perpetual night might be even better for me because daylight all the time. The sunscreen I'd have to apply. Although I don't know know what the UV index.

Ben, you will not imagine how much sunscreen we brought. Yeah, that would be an issue. They do have nice, the sunscreen outside the US is pretty nice. Yeah, we touched on that last time. Because Meg evidently has the hookup, she could get me the good stuff. Oh, I didn't say that. I was just saying there is good stuff that exists and we do not have as much access. I'm not perfect to it, but I assume the sunscreen black market is thriving.

I risked a sunscreen explosion in my checked luggage to bring some back. Oh, nice. And I got away with it. Okay. Yeah, I think counter-intuitively,'d stay inside more if there were more daylights. So that actually might backfire. But let's talk a little bit about actual trades that happened. Yes.

Involving people who I don't think you ranked. That would have been inconvenient. Well, maybe actually illuminating. I would have blocked it. Yeah, no. The greatest thing that could happen, if it had already run. Yeah. Right.

If the pieces run, that's not my business, Ben. That's not my problem. That's whoever's writing the trade reacts problem. If it happens before it runs, then we have to do more work. But if you want to swap a guy in the back 10, you go right ahead, friends. The year that Juan Soto got traded after he was on the trade value list was awesome.

That's like the best I've ever felt about writing the thing. Yeah, because you so rarely get that kind of feedback or confirmation, which the trade value exercise, it's highly theoretical really. Yes. The nature of it is that you never actually find out whether you were right. Because the guys who have the most trade value typically don't get traded because they also have

a lot of value to their current employer. And there are just all sorts of impediments in the way of a trade. And so you don't actually find out whether Ben ranked them right. It's not like even Eric's prospect lists or something, he could go back years later and say, okay, Ben ranked them right. It's not like even Eric's prospect lists or something, he could go back years later and say, okay, how did this correlate to how these guys did or how other sources ranked them and who was closer to the mark? We can't even look retrospectively and say, oh, yep, Clemens nailed it that year because guys mostly don't get traded. It's very rare when they do. And I think there are people who say, well, what is the purpose of this exercise?

What are we even debating? I mean, it's popular, it's a staple of the site, and yet it is the sort of theoretical exercise. And I guess it's just because it can be useful to work through things, even if you never know whether you had the right answer. The thought exercise, it's about the journey, not the destination, and you learn things about baseball

and about yourself and your own evaluations. And so it can be instructive, even if you can never prove that you did it better than someone else. I also think that you get, it's funny, cause you get a little bit of feedback from the players themselves, thankfully not directly, to be clear.

But, you know, we have... They object to their positional power rankings placement sometimes. On occasion that does happen. There might have been more media than players, but yeah. Yeah, but I think that, you know, we get feedback in so far as like on occasion, we've had guys who have like ranked very highly and then they've like kind of been a bust the following year. And it's like, was the evaluation wrong in the moment? Did they did their profile change in an appreciable way? So you're always trying to do that evaluation. But you're right that we,

we very rarely get an opportunity to be like, wow, like he really was traded, like the 15th most valuable guy in baseball. Like that doesn't pop up very often. Yeah. So Ryan McMahon did not crack your list, and either did Josh Naylor or Gregory Soto. But we can talk just the opening salvos in the week or so, leading up to the trade deadline, we've had a few moves made, including Meg's Mariners making a move to get a bat. Josh Naylor on the move again.

I guess we should do a little, what did Jerry Depoto do drop here. What did Jerry Depoto do? What did Jerry Depoto do? We're gonna talk to Meg Rowley about a trade or two. It's what did Jerry Depoto do? We're gonna talk to Meg Rowley about a trade or two. Cause what did Jerry Depoto do? Josh Naylor going to the Mariners who had been connected to Eugenio Suarez,

former Mariner. And I guess which team hasn't been connected to Eugenio Suarez. That's kind of the nature of the market. It is not a really rich market, or so it seems at least. It seems like last year where there weren't really any superstars traded. There weren't really any tippy top prospects traded, just a lot of rentals, no 2022, one Soto trade in the mix. And we might be in store for more of the same this year.

So Eugenio Suarez is kind of like, he's the shiny bobble that everyone wants. Not that he's a bad player. He's quite a good player in fact. But instead of Eugenio Suarez, the Mariners went shopping for Josh Naylor. So Meg, do you think this was what the Mariners needed? Will he address what ailed them? I think he hasers needed? Will he address what ailed them? I think he has a chance of helping to address what ailed them. Here's a fun and by that I mean not fun fact about the Mariners.

Seattle first baseman have a 94 WRC plus on the season. Is that the best in 20 years? Wow, I can't believe I'm getting whacked that way. That seems aggressive, unnecessary. You know, it's not what you want from an offense first position. Josh Naylor is a good hitter. I think that Josh Naylor is just going to be stapled to first base in terms of his position, but that's fine.

And I think that they gave up an appropriate amount for him. Ashton Izzy and Brandon Garcia are fine prospects, and I think that they will help the Diamond Bax, but they didn't trade any of their top guys. I have heard some scuttlebutt about the asking price for Eohanio Suarez, and it is quite a bit higher than Josh Nailers, at least from what I've heard through the grapevine. So I think that they managed to improve without giving up too, too much. And so I like that for them. You know, I really do. I don't know if I've been frequently doing it, but I've written a lot about First Base

as a like market wide, league-wide position. And I feel like my takeaway has generally been that these guys that are like 10 to 20 percent above average offensively don't really move the needle and so you can get them for fairly low cost and prospect stuff. So like, good, you should. The Mariners are taking advantage of the fact that it's pretty easy to kind of pretty economical in terms of like, you know, player costs to rotate between these guys. Like Luke really is not doing it for you.

Fine. Like, great. Get a different guy who fits into that zone. Because since there are a bunch of them, the legal let you get Josh Nader is a really good hitter, right? Like, he's one of the, I don't know, 100, 150 best baseball, like best hitters in the world. Cool. If they're letting you get that guy for cheap,

I say do it. So I'm very into this trade for the Mariners. Feels like very good risk reward to me. And also at the position where it's easiest to get this bat. If this guy, if he played second base or even maybe a corner outfield spot, well, like I don't think he'd be that different in terms of improvement on the Mariners, but it costs a lot more. So great.

I think this makes a ton of sense. Definitely the kind of move I would have been looking to make as them. Yeah. And Nailer's about to be a free agent. So there's been this whole conversation about, oh, what will the Diamondbacks do? Which way will they go? And so this seems to signal that they're more in the subtracting camp, which is not a shock, but but probably in moderation because they are.

They're kind of in the middle of a competitive window here. And a lot went wrong for them this year and a lot of injuries and all the rest. But it's not a time for a tear down. It's a time for OK, here's some guys who won't be back anyway. It's not like a Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, everyone's moving. No, I don't think so. Probably it's Suarez and Naylor make sense to get something for those guys when you're not going anywhere this year, seemingly. Yeah. They're bolstering their future, not in a way that is going to have tremendous, tremendous impact, but I think that both

Garcia and Ashen can be useful big leakers. Garcia has already spent some time in the majors this year, although not a ton. You're right, they didn't compromise themselves for 2026. You really don't want to waste any prime years of Corbin Carroll or the remaining productive years of Ketel Marte if you can help it. And the way that they were compromised this year isn't their fault, right? Like all of their pitching got hurt. And so I think, you know, putting yourself in a position where you can immediately retool for the next season, you know, picking up some useful guys, that seems good. Seems good from, you know, the Diamondbacks and Mariners, they do these trades a lot. And I, I very,

I very often come away thinking, good job guys. Like everybody, seems like everybody got what they wanted out of this. Yeah. Okay. And yeah, he's a good hitter, Nailer. It's, he's not like a prototypical first base slugger. There, there aren't that many of those guys around anymore. We've talked about that. People have written about that. Just the big hairy first baseman who just hits fingers. Does he have to be hairy? Is that part of the...

I think it's more preferred. I think it's preferred. Yeah. It definitely adds to the image, I think. He needs to be a fursuit. Yeah, I think so. It's, you know, you need kind of like a... Perhaps like a bit oafish,

but like in a delightful smack in the ball all over the place way. Are we talking, are we talking head hair? Are we talking facial hair? Are we talking chest hair? What kind of hair? Body hair, I think I'm talking about. Body hair.

Yeah, like forearm hair. Need some hairy forearms if you're a celebrity. A tuft of chest hair poking out, I feel like would really do it. That's essential, yeah. It's, you know, like the Clue Haywood in Major League, who I know was played by the pitcher, but nonetheless, that was the image that he was trying to contour there. So I feel like I should get you in the trade value evaluations.

You and I have very similar views here. Yeah, yeah. And so Nailor. Just like Burt Reynolds at first base all across the league, basically. Yes, right. A little bulkier, but yes. A little bulkier. Yeah, a bigger Burt Reynolds at first base all across the league, basically. Yes, right. Bulkier, but yes. A bigger Burt Reynolds, yeah. Yeah, and Nailor, he's got some pop,

but he's also like a contact guy. I mean, it's good if you can combine both of those things. But yeah. Yeah, he has 11 home runs. Yeah, he definitely contact two more in Safeway, or Safeco, or T-Mobile, if we're lucky. I actually think he's a good fit for the park though, because of his contact.

Yeah, if you look at his, like, expected home run stuff, he doesn't actually take as big of a hit at T-Mobile as you might expect him to, but yeah. And I do feel like his style of hitting, which is like, get rid of the strikeouts, like, spray the ball around, is probably better suited there. It's hard, it's just hard to hit there, but it's so hard.

I mean, Baylor is, he's kind of got something for everybody, right? He doesn't strike out much. He's not a big power hitter, but surely the old school types would like him more. It's 292 batting average. He batted 300 in 2023. I think everybody came away from this with exactly what they needed. And, um, you know, I wouldn't hate it if they can, they being the Mariners continued to, to reinforce that lineup, but this was a, I think a good first step for sure. And yeah, I mean, especially if the

asking prices for a Oh honey or what they're rumored to be, I think that this was a, a good outlay of resources for return. All right, Meg, I promise this is my last one, but do you think the Diamondbacks would take Sebi Zavala and Carlos Vargas? Do you think that Sebi Zavala is still on the Mariners? Definitely not. Definitely not. We sang Suarez's praises not long ago when he hit his 350th career homer.

He's having a career year, which is something at this age. And after a lot of teams, maybe including the Mariners, kind of thought his best days were behind him. And it looked like they were for a while. And here he's sitting on 36 home runs, which is a lot in 101 games. That's a lot in a full season for that matter. And you know, he had that year when he hit 49,

but that was a long time ago. That was 2019 and 36. Everybody was sitting 39 home runs. Yeah, that was 2019. Right. And 36 would be his high, is his high for any other season, except for that outlier. So I don't know. I'm not doubting that he would be a good pickup for someone. He feels sort of streaky to me, and...

It's very subjective and possibly biased whenever I say someone's streaky. I don't actually know whether that's statistically true, whether they are streakier than the typical hitter, but Suarez, I guess, his streaks stand out in my mind because when he gets hot, he really is scalding. And maybe I'm just remembering last year where he started so slow and then he was one of the best hitters in baseball

the rest of the way. And I don't know, I guess I'd have some fear in the back of my mind if I were trading for him now that it would go the other way and he would just be ice cold after I acquired him. It is kind of funny, like, he's actually very consistent on an annualized basis in that he's pretty good every year.

He had a bad season in 2021, really bad season. That's the year they tried to play him at shortstop and he couldn't play shortstop. That's on you. That's really the they tried to play him at shortstop and he couldn't play shortstop. That's not you. That's really the reds. But I feel like he's the kind of guy where if the industry regarded him as low, you should probably be trading for him because he's going to give you three to four war. Look at his.

It's true. Yeah. And if he's regarded high, well, he's probably the same guy. Yeah. Other than that down year 2021 and then of course, 2020 he's been a four-win player every year, basically. Yeah, but not ever like five or six. No, and I guess that's the thing, you know, you might say, well, he's already almost at four now,

so he's already gotten in his production. This, you know, gambler's fallacy, that doesn't mean he's going to get colds because he has to. The universe has declared that he has to be a four-win player and thus he has only 0.8 war left to accrue in the rest of the season. But I don't know, he has been so extraordinarily consistent on an annual basis, you're right,

that's a part of me. I mean, you've got to figure you're not going to get the best of his play this season, that the Diamondbacks probably got the best of Eugenio Suarez in 2025. But you're acquiring him for what he's projected to do, which according to the Fancraft Step Shards, still pretty good. Yeah. 117 WRC plus another war or so. And you'll take that. But again, if that's the guy that there's a feeding frenzy for at this deadline, then- It's a little light, yeah.

Yeah, it's a little light. feeding frenzy for at this deadline, then- It's a little light, yeah. Yeah, it's a little light. One thing I will just say in Suarez's defense and Petriello had a good thread about this, like he did make an appreciable change from the beginning of last year to the end, both in terms of where he was positioning himself

depth-wise in the batter's box and also how open his stance was. And so it's not like, you know, he went from the first half of 2024 to the second half and there was no adjustment at all. And all of a sudden he was just hitting better and you might be like, Oh, is that an actual change? Like it does seem like there was an approach adjustment here. And having said that, you know, I feel like the Mariners did well, if, if we got a breaking news alert tomorrow that said actually they figured it out and Neohenio Suarez is a mariner again.

I wouldn't be mad about it. You know, he seems like everybody just likes A.O. Henio. It seems like he's a sweetheart. He's got that hair, you know, and he hits big home runs. So what's not to like about that? All of those things are good. Did he move forward in the batter's box? Yeah, I believe.

I believe he did. And my advice from Mike's thread, he moved way up in the box from about nine inches from the start of 2024 to the end. So he like, really made an adjustment. And his stance was meaningfully to his credit. He's a very good tinkerer. He seems to do a great job of like when what's working, when what he's doing has stopped working, he'll like tinker around until he fixes it. I think that might contribute to the streakiness, which is just that he's really good at figuring out what pictures are doing to beta and then changing. Like I'm looking at his stance data. He actually opened his stance just as much

between 2023 and 2024. So he's like constantly changing. It's really cool. That is cool. Well, I've not taken a stance, so to speak, on how open or closed you should be. I don't have a blanket one size fits all rule for that. Like I do for everybody should move back in the box, but this is a, this is a data point that I will have to take into account that goes against my advice that everyone

should ignore and clearly Eugenio Suarez has and it hasn't hurt him. Well, one place where it is good to hit is Coors Field. Ryan McMahon knows that quite well and now he will have to adjust to not hitting there as his home park at least. Not that Yankee Stadium is a tough place to hit either, but it's no course. So the Yankees were also connected to AOI Newswars, again, who wasn't, but they decided to go a little younger, a little cheaper, a little more team controlled. A little less good. Well, yeah, a little less good, that too. And they have acquired Ryan McMahon from the Rockies.

So, hey, Rockies made a trade. Good for them. I guess it would have been better for them if they had traded Ryan McMahon sooner when he had more value, but hey, they had the value of getting to enjoy the work of Ryan McMahon in the interim, which was never quite as good

as it seemed like it was going to be. He was kind of a perpetual breakout candidate, or like there always seemed to be a little bit more in him maybe, and he just has not fully tapped into that yet. So I don't know whether the Yankees think that's still in there, or they just think that our third baseman have been pretty bad on the whole,

and we just haven't had one really lately and DJ Lemahue's gone and we moved jazz and we need a third baseman and we haven't gotten a lot of third base production. And so, hey, Ryan McMahon, he's been at least an average-ish player and you take average if you have a hole there. That's a couple of wind boosts potentially.

So Ryan McMahon, like a lot of long time Rockies, does have a huge home road split. He has a career 18 OPS at home and 664 on the road. So that's an 80 TOPS plus on the road. and now he will be on the road as it relates to Coors Field permanently. But also we know that the Rockies career home road splits, those are deceptive. It's not as if, you know, sometimes people just look at the road line that a Rockies player has amassed and says, well, that's who he is now. And that's not accurate either because well, A, when he's on the road now, he will be at

home. So you get your home field advantage somewhere other than Coors Field Yankee Stadium specifically in this case. And also you don't have the reason for the huge Rockies home road splits, which is the change in elevation and the change in pitch movement and the course field hangover and all that. So maybe it takes a little time to get used to playing somewhere else at sea level ish, but you don't just extrapolate from the road line and say, oh, great, we got a 664 OPS guy. Probably he settles in somewhere in the middle. This is maybe just because I'm a little loopy from writing all week, but I hope this isn't

too uncharitable. But what you hang as far as is to four win seasons. Ryan McMahon is to 90 weighted runs created plus seasons. It's like every year he has the same batting line. And it's like, not that good. It's amazing. Did you realize he debuted in 2017? Yeah, he's been around. He's 30. Yeah. That's kind of amazing. Oh, he can opt out if he's in the top five in MVP voting in this year. But I guess he's changed leagues. Yeah, that'll hurt his chances.

That's all that's holding him back, really. He is still a fine third baseman. Honestly, the Rockies are one of the teams that is consistently more fun to watch than you'd think from, I don't know, like their record. And Ryan McMahon is a big part of that. I also love how bad he is at stealing bases for being like a pretty good athlete. It's like pretty delightful. I think that's pretty fun.

He's really fun to watch on defense. Yeah. She's known Nolan Aronato, peak Aronato, so tough act to follow there. I guess, I don't know how impressed Rockies fans are by Ryan McKean following Nolan. Well, yeah. But he is quite good over there. And Yankees fans, at least, should be impressed

compared to what they had. Yeah, because look, what's going on? Is there something in the water up there? I feel like every time I put a Yankees game on, they're throwing the ball around and not the way you want to. Like, especially over this last little bit, just like catastrophically bad fielding and on the infield in particular. And so even if he, you know, lands in between his Coors and road former road split, even if he is just a 90 WRC plus guy, not having to worry about the ball coming from over there, I think is going to actually be a tremendous bomb for Yankees fans because it has been very poor and very poor of late. And it's just like one of the more frustrating ways to give away runs. You're in this tight

division race, The Blue Jays seem to never lose now. Like you gotta, you gotta clean this procedural stuff up. If for no other reason than at some point I imagine, and Ben, maybe this has been Lindberg, maybe this has already happened and you could tell us, but like at some point, some angry person on sports doc radio in New York is going to blame the Beards for the sloppiness of the Yankees defense. And that take might destroy the internet. So I think we need Ryan McMahon to save the internet.

Really. I guess the comeback to that would be they were bad in this exact same way with the clean shaven look last year. I mean, famously, I wasn't saying that it would be a rational rejoinder. I'm, you know, they never are, but, um, yes, you'd have to have the memory of a goldfish not to know that this has been an issue that's plagued the Yankees, but also, uh, I guess sports talk radio is kind of that's, that's a feature, not a buck of that job description.

It's funny cause the Yankees, kind of that's a feature, not a book of that job description. It's funny cause the Yankees, if you look at various advanced defensive sets, they're not a bad defensive team. They're not the Blue Jays just putting on a defense clinic. It's Fred McGriff over there doing the defensive drills in Toronto, but it's like, it's just, they do make a fair number of errors and it's just fundamental mistakes I guess, they can be quite frustrating when they do prove costly.

And I don't know, like that is something that I think people, that's one of the many things that Yankees fans are frustrated about when it comes to this administration and Cashman and Boon and where's the urgency and why aren't they getting on these guys? And that is, I guess, one of the few things that you could really pin on a manager. Hopefully, Davey Martinez not listening here because I know it's never the coach's fault. But this does seem like one case where like if this persists over a period of years and sure, there's an opportunity cost if you're going to do defensive drills to make sure you're hitting the cutoff man

or whatever it is, then maybe you're wearing guys down and the grind gets to you or you're not working on something else instead. But it is something that not only frustrates fans, but can cost you games on the margins at least. It's probably disproportionate in terms of how mad it makes people. It's kind of like a batting order mistake. Like when you just have some weird batting order and we know from the simulations,

okay, this probably doesn't really hurt you unless you have come up with the exact inverse of the optimal lineup and you're playing that every single day. And other than that, it's not going to make that much of a difference. But a single game, you might have the wrong guy up there in a big situation making the last out or something. And that will just drive you baddie. And it also feels like an unforced error because you get to draw up the lineup before the game even begins.

And you can deliberate on that at length. And so these little things where you're maybe giving up a run here or there and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter that much, but in terms of the perception and the fan experience and the frustration, it matters quite a bit. And when it persists over a period of seasons, as it seems to for the Yankees,

and yes, we know that all flaws of the Yankees will be blown out of proportion. And many other teams suffer from these same ills, and you just don't hear quite as much about it. And it doesn't happen in a spectacular World Series collapse because you didn't even make the World Series in the first place, but it does seem to be an issue. So now it'll be a little less of an issue, maybe,

with Ryan McMahon around. It does seem to be an issue. Yeah. So now it'll be a little less of an issue, maybe. Okay. With Ryan McMahon around. Yeah, maybe. Okay, and the Mets acquired Soto. Old news, I know, but also they got a second Soto. They got Gregory Soto from the Orioles. So the Orioles also kind of in that Diamondbacks camp of, they only have so many spare parts of players

who can actually be moved, and obviously they're gonna be intending to contend again next year, so they're not gonna do anything too dramatic, but if they can move some players like a Gregory Soto, then they will. And he's been a fine reliever for a while. He's been fairly consistent, actually quite consistent, if you go by FIP wise, he's the Ryan McMahon of relievers.

He was a mid threes FIP year in and year out, giving you 60 innings or so. And so now he'll do that for the Mets. It is kind of incredible Ryan McMahon. It's not just the WRC pluses. It's the raw counting stats. Like 23 homers, 20 homers, 23 homers, 20 homers. He has 16 now ahead of his pace.

He strikes out a lot. I forgot how much he strikes out. He strikes out 32% of the time. But consistently. But very consistently, it's true. Anyway, I guess, you know, what you're gonna get from these guys, these are known commodities, really,

all three of these players, at least as much as we can know anything about baseball. So those are the moves that have been made thus far. Next week, we're probably gonna front load our potting, do a couple of pods early to sort of stay out of the way of the anticipated flurry of moves coming around Thursday, which is the actual deadline. And then we will reconvene on Friday for a post deadline discussion. So if those guys are known commodities, then the opposite of that is Spencer Jones, who was not moved in this Ryan

McMahon trade, and may not be moved in any other move that the Yankees might make, though I guess that's always a possibility. But I am officially fascinated by Spencer Jones now. One of the prospects who has caught my eye, and has caught a lot of people's eye, it helps that he plays for the Yankees, also helps that he's huge. He is 6'7", 240, and it is highly amusing to me that the Yankees have another judge

sized outfielder just raring to go at triple a now. How do they keep finding these guys? And they stick out. Yeah, I guess it's not hard to find them. And I'm more I'm workshopping my, my tight 10 on this episode apparently. Sorry. Yeah. And they draft them. That's how they find them. They draft them in the first round in fact. And so Spencer Jones is their first rounder from a few years ago from 2022. 2022.

Yeah. And he was the 25th pick and Judge was I guess like the 32nd pick in his draft in 2013. And some of the same concerns about them as prospects, like huge, big strike zone, holes in the swing, you know, the long swing, long levers, et cetera. Will there be too many strikeouts? And Judge was a prospect, of course,

but there were doubts about him. There was skepticism. And I think right up until he really just sort of took the league by storm, people weren't totally sold on how good he could be. And Spencer Jones is not as highly rated a prospect as Aaron Judge was even, but he has some of the same attributes and some of the same

drawbacks and he's so extreme. He's got some gallow in him really, just in terms of he's older than Joey Gallo was as a prospect, which isn't good, doesn't bode well for Spencer Jones. He's 24 already. He's 24, but he has sort of a similar profile in the sense that he just has extreme top of the scale power and also extreme top of the scale whiff and how are those things gonna balance and will one completely counteract and eat into the other

or will it work for a while as it did for quite some time for Joey Gallo who is a good hitter and a good player until, well, until he became a Yankee more or less. But Spencer Jones, he was a highly rated prospect two springs ago, he made top 100 lists, but then he fell off them entirely really this spring because he struck out almost 37% of the time in double A last year. Yeah.

And you know, not particularly young for the level and that's concerning, obviously. And so this year he starts out really raking in double A, but you're not going to make that much of that because it was what his third shot at that level and, you know, 24. So he hits about as well as you can hit there. He has a 186 WRC plus, a double A. And so they challenge him and it's kind of put up or shut up now or never. Okay, we'll move you to triple A.

Well, now he's played only 18 games in triple A, but he's had 10 home runs. He's hitting 387, 449, 853 in AAA. That's a 224 WRC plus. So 67 games in the minors now, almost 300 play-picks. You're actually missing his 19th game where he hit three home runs. Wait, did I not refresh the page?

Okay, I had the page open this morning, I didn't realize. He's hitting 400. Did I not refresh the page? Okay. I had the page open this morning. I didn't realize. Yeah, he's 400 457 950 for 247 wrc plus. Oh my goodness. So he has 13 homers and 94 Yeah, I think we had three home runs this past weekend and that was a good weekend And then he was like what if I compress that into one game? And he did that. So yeah, 247 WRC plus in AAA now. So he has a 206 WRC plus on the season. He has been the best hitter in the minor leagues. That's how good Aaron Judge is hitting against major league pitchers. Almost exactly. Yeah. It's, it's It's really wild. Aaron Judge is really good. Aaron Judge has slumped all the way down to a 211 WRC plus.

Just sad to see him fallen on such hard times, but yeah, almost the same productivity and you know, they're the same height. They're not the same build. Judge has about 40 pounds on Spencer Jones, at least listed and visually too. Actually, Spencer Jones has more of an O'Neill-Cruz build. In fact, he has exactly the same listed dimensions. That's exactly the comp I was going to put on him. That's exactly the comp I was going to put on him.

Six, seven, two, forty. And it works not just physically, but also in terms of his game, probably. So because the thing about Spencer Jones, if you look him up on Prospect Savant, so it's like a sea of red on the percentiles with most of the, well, all of the contact quality and exit speed stuff. It's like 97th, 98th, 99th percentile and everything.

He's a 95.3 average exit velocity. And yet he also has like single digit percentiles when it comes to like whiffs and swing strike rate or, you know, 12th percentile in zone contact rate, 18% in chase rate. It's, it's just extremes on both ends. And so if you look at his average exit velocity, 95.3, and his zone contact rate, which is 75.5, there is only one hitter who exceeds those marks or who's more extreme than each of those marks in the major. So O'Neill Cruz is the only major league hitter who has a higher average exit speed than Spencer Jones. And Raphael Devers is

the only major league hitter qualified who has a lower zone contact rate. And Raphael Devers is a very good hitter. So that might not sound disconcerting, but that was one of the reasons people said, oh, maybe not a bad idea for the Red Sox to trade him if he's suddenly getting beaten on pitches in the strike zone. Yeah. Actually his career low zone. Yeah, that too. Yeah.

Big dip. Yeah. And he's, he's worst in that category. Another Rocky Michael Tolia is second worst in that category. And Michael Tolia is strikeout rate, by the way, is- It's bad, yeah. It's 38.4%, so higher than Spencer Jones's was in the minors last year.

At least Tolia is doing it in the majors. Anyway, that's another Rockies digression. So basically he hits the ball harder than just about any big leaguer, but also misses the ball in the strike zone just about more than any big leaguer. So how will those things work, I wonder? Eric had him as a 45-plus future value guy in January.

And I messaged Eric to ask whether his valuation has changed lately, and he said he's revisiting the Yankees and Blue Jays lists currently. And so he will make that determination. And he said, you know, he expects that even if his peak turns out to be pretty good, that he will be volatile. Maybe because of this combination of skills and deficiencies, but yeah, I'm just fascinated. And you know, he plays mostly center field.

He's played some corners. Baseball prospectus has him about an average defender in the minors. So maybe he's kind of judge Ian and that he can hold his own in center, but perhaps is better suited for a corner long-term where you tend to see large people like that. But yeah, I just, I'm waiting with

bated breath to see when he arrives and how he arrives, and is this guy good. I mean, at his age, don't they need to give him a shot in the majors if they can find a way to? Pretty much, yeah. I really want to see it. I have absolutely no clue, especially because the AAA majors gap seems wider and all. Yeah. Maybe it could be anything. But, yeah, I want to I want to find out.

I wonder what how they will approach that, because if they had a seven game lead in the division, well, sure, bring bring the young man up. Let's see. Right. Yeah. They're in such a tight race with Toronto that like they kind of can't. And that doesn't seem like a like you're setting the guy up to succeed if you bring him up and then he's not good but I imagine if they if they have a you know an outfield injury he's probably gonna be the first guy that they that they look to right? Yeah I guess I mean they they don't have an acute need in the outfield really the way

that they did at third base they lead the majors in outfield war, that is largely attributable to Aaron Judge, figuratively, literally, largely, but also, they've, you know, like, they have Jason Dominguez in left, and so he's a big part of their future, and he's younger than Spencer Jones, and he's not been great, but he's not been so bad that, like...

He's not unplayable. No, he's not been great, but he's not been so bad that like, he's not unplayable. No, he's not unplayable. And then Trent Grisham is obviously giving you a good glove in center and a way better bat than you were banking on probably. I know he, he started hot and then he got cold, but overall he's been, he's been really good. And then they have Bellinger who can float around. And so it's not like they've needed

to call up Spencer Jones, but I guess it is sort of a sink or swim situation. And they pushed him to AAA and he has not sunk. That is certainly the case. So you just kind of keep advancing him, I guess, and see what happens when he faces big league pitching. Dan just did his update of the preseason Zips top 100, and Spencer Jones was on that.

And Dan noted that, or the tables that he provided in that piece showed that Spencer Jones has raised his five-year war forecast, unsurprisingly, I guess, more than any other player who was on that preseason top 100 except for Jacob Wilson and Jett Williams of the Mets. And Dan wrote, I poo-pooed the idea of the Yankees getting a lot in return for Spencer Jones at the deadline, but looking at the translations and the projections, I might be guilty of being short-sighted. He's 24, not 28 after all,

and he's absolutely eviscerating minor league pitching. It's getting harder to dismiss the idea of him being a real masher in the majors. Dan missed a short-sighted play on words that he could have done there, but that's okay. It's tired anyway. And so, I wonder whether we will see that sometime soon and what will happen. Because I wrote a piece for Grantland about Joey Gallo way back when and I called him the most interesting man

in the miners, he was to me at least, just like, can this work? This singular prospect profile. And so now the same fascination has been transferred over to Spencer Jones. I want to see it. Yep. Okay well we can talk about your trade value then. Oh yeah. The ostensible purpose for your appearance on this podcast. I did note another thing that Dan pointed out in FanGraph Slack, and I asked him if I could mention it here,

and he said yes, and also he said that it was prompted by an observation someone made in his chat this week at FanGraph's. Lack of rookie production. Rookies have been bad this year. Not good. No. And, Ben, you just alluded to a larger AAA-2 majors gap, which I've doubted, and I wrote something this AAA to majors gap, which I've doubted. And I wrote something this spring to that effect. And I feel like it's largely a product of the fact that you just have very

different offensive environments for various reasons in AAA and the majors. And so AAA is just a higher offense level these days. And so when a prospect goes from AAA to the majors, where it's kind of at a low ebb, at least in some offensive stats, I think people don't do the mental adjustment to say, okay, well, even if he continues to produce as well relative to the league, his stats are gonna,

yeah, there's gonna be a superficial subtraction there just because he's going to a place where it's harder for everyone to hit, or it's just not as rich and offensive environment. So that's kind of been my position, but I guess it's not helping bolster that position that rookies have just not been good this year. You didn't have a rookie on your trade value ranking, right? You...

Roman Anthony. Oh, you had Roman Anthony. Okay. Yes. You didn't have... Oh, Jacob Wilson. Did you have Jacob Wilson? I thought you didn't have him.

He's at the very tail end. Oh, okay. I missed. I thought you would have snubbed both of them. Jacob Mizjorowski. You didn't have- Oh, Jacob Wilson. Did you have Jacob Wilson? I thought you didn't have him. He's at the very tail end. Oh, okay, I missed. I thought you had snipped both of them. Jacob Mizurowski. You did have Miz? Okay, so no. I feel like I control F'd Jacob, didn't see anything.

It was like, wow, no Jakobs, but evidently I didn't do that very well. So you had three rookies on your list. I was like, we had, definitely had. So yeah, Miz was 35, Wilson was 48. Yeah. And Drake Baldwin. Oh, Drake Baldwin. All right.

Man, we're just falling down on ourselves here. Yeah. I don't even, I don't know what the typical number of rookies to be on the trade value list is, so I'm not sure whether- Certainly not wildly out of line. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

But what is wildly out of line is is the league-wide rookie production. So rookies batters plus pitchers thus far at least going by the rookie designation on the fan crafts leaderboards have produced 29.3 war they're on pace for 46.2 collectively which would be the least in any season since 2004 more than 20 years which would be the least in any season since 2004. More than 20 years, 2004 rookies produced 39 war. And just to give people a sense, generally, it's at least double this.

It's like between 80 war and 120 war. So to be at 29 at this point on pace for 46, that is a very weak showing by the rookies as a group. And I don't know what to make of that or whether we should make anything of that, but it's just not a spectacular field. And I guess that's kind of come up in rookie of the year conversations too,

where it's just like, well, Jacob Wilson, I guess, though he's sort of slumped and- Sort of slumped, who, why? Big time slumped and Nick Kurtz is coming on and then you look in the NL list and it's just like a bunch of brewers, basically. And Drake Baldwin. And Drake Baldwin, yeah.

It's... No one's having like a true spectacular outlier. I know that The Miz has gotten a ton of attention, obviously, but in terms of like like, overall value, and he arrived fairly late, too, and also he's, like, getting pulled from starts after 60 pitches for no apparent reason, so that's just how pitcher development works these days, or doesn't work, as is often the case.

Anyway, do you think this signifies anything that rookies have been bad? I don't. I think it's just ebb and flow. Like, what if Jackson Merrill debuted this year instead? I feel like it's very hard to take a, like not even really a trend line, right? It's one year and breathe too much into it. That's basically, I mean, I could be proven wrong and I'm happy to change my opinion if it happens again next year. But it feels to me like your base guess has to be no, not much has changed. And feels really hard to say based on this one sample that now it's totally different.

You know, and part of it too is like, we would all agree that Rume and Anthony is very good player and you know, he's played in 37 games. Some of it is that some of these guys didn't come up right away. I don't know. I think it's going to be fine. I wasn't surprised if for no other reason than outside of Anthony, when you looked at the way that top 100s were distributed this spring, it felt like there were close to the majors guys to be sure, but among those close to the majors guys, other than Anthony, I don't think anyone was like, oh my God, this is like the consensus best guy.

I mean, people needed Christian Campbell to work out basically. Right. And, and you know, that isn't to say that there aren't talented players here, but like we weren't going to see Sebastian Walcott this year, right? Like he wasn't even 19 when we, right. Like the fact that we haven't seen like Samuel Passai was like kind of weird, but you know, and then you had guys get hurt like you always do. And so I think when you have some amount of a weaker class or a class where the best guys are a little bit further away other than Anthony. It doesn't help that Roki Sasaki wasn't good, right? I don't know that I'm concerned yet.

We'll see what the next year brings. There's still talented guys down there, but I think that it's worth monitoring because there's been this assumption that we'll just make the miners smaller and you know that that'll be fine because we'll have all of these mature college guys that end up floating to the top of every draft class and they'll be ready to go and Maybe that's true But maybe you also have a bunch of guys who like Don't have as much time to marinate in an actual pro system and I don't know. We'll just have to see.

I'm curious what the answer is going to be on that. Yeah. One thing I haven't checked is how much of this is playing time and how much of it is under performance. So I don't know whether it's just that there have been fewer rookies or whether the rookies have actually been bad. I see that rookie hitters have an 84 WRC plus collectively, which is not great, I think, as these things go.

They're always below average, but I think not usually that far below average, but I don't know how the raw totals of playing time compare. So it could be partly that. And yeah, it should be semi-cyclical, at least. I know that every year you have a draft and you have a signing class. And so in theory, the young guys should just get replenished and the pipeline should just be full all the time, but that's not quite how it works. And, and the last two years have been excellent for rookie war. And so like 2023 was 114 war from rookies

and last year was 110 war from rookies. And that was actually something I cited in my piece, like, yeah, gosh, if the adjustment is that hard, how are the rookies so productive still? But maybe it is partly that. It's just that a bunch of guys happened to arrive the last couple of seasons and establish themselves. And so there was just a slightly thinner crop

this year potentially. And I think- Yeah, the 2024 top 10 was like- Bokkers, completely bokkers. Yeah, there were just no new Jacksons this year. We exhausted all the Jacksons. So I think that's probably most of it. And yeah, it's not like the latest data point

in a long-term trend of rookies declining. If anything, it's just the opposite. And on the whole, younger players have gotten more productive and better when they first come up. And so this is probably just a blip, but it is notable. It is different and it does make the rookie of the year races a little, a little less exciting. So no one's having a Aaron Judge 2017 season.

No Cruz's hurt painter hasn't been able to come up yet because he was coming back from injury. Campbell's just been bad. Joe needed Tommy John, you know, but like there are exciting guys. Like I can't wait for us to be able to like see Jesus Mata is trajectory with Milwaukee. I think their Brewers team knows what they're doing with player dev. They're doing a good job. It seems like it. Yeah. Let's get Spencer Jones up there. He will single-handedly raise this war or not. That is also entirely possible. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I noticed on your list, Ben, is that I think a lot of people think of the trade value series as like a

ranking of the most underpaid players, which, you know, there's a correlation there, I guess, but it's not a perfect correlation. But there's something to that because you're talking about surplus value when you talk about trade value and surplus value can come from someone being really good at baseball and it can come from someone not making much money. And a combination of those two things tends to lead to someone who ends up high on this list. But what stood out to me about this year, at least relative to last year, is that your top guys,

a lot of them have already gotten paid. Not all of them, but they're just, they're so good that they're still there. So to spoil it, it's already published, but we will link to it. But number one, Shohei Otani. Okay. We know that guy's good, but I think he was number seven for you last year and he wasn't pitching last year, et cetera. But like Otani is number one.

Bobby Witt who got his big extension is number two. And then Skeens who hasn't gotten paid yet. Carol is number four. James Wood hasn't gotten paid yet. Carol is number four. James Wood hasn't gotten paid yet. Ellie is number six. Gunner, but Aaron Judge is number eight, for instance. Even though he's like getting up there in years and signed what seemed to be a big contract at the time.

Yeah, like a lot of your top 10 Acuña's is in there. Also Cal is in there. Like a lot of those guys happen to be on pretty market friendly deals. Cal, Acuña, but yeah, Judge, Joe Hay, Witt. Right. Yeah. I mean, Otani signed to, well, by some definition, by any definition, I guess, a record contract. And even, you do the adjustment, it was still bigger than anyone else's had been to that point. And so to have Otani and Judge here after their windfalls, their free agent windfalls, that seems noteworthy. But I guess what also is noteworthy is that like they're the two best players

in baseball and they're just ridiculously good. So, so I mean, I think Otani is kind of a separate deal where. Yeah. So I did a bunch of talking to Meg about this, talking to my contacts on teams about this. And I basically asked them, how much more valuable do you think the Dodgers are? Because they've signed Shohei Otani net of paying him. And they were like, Oh, yeah, like a lot. Yeah. Like, obviously, you know, I don't have access to their marketing and advertising budgets and like to the money

that you get paid to be the official X or the money that you pay to be the official X of the Dodgers. I think that it would be wildly conservative to approximate it at any less than $50 million a year, all the various angles of juice they're getting, and that's more than Otani's NPV of salary. I think it's also fair to say that there's no one else in baseball like this. The example I gave in my write-up was, California and Japan have very similar GDPs,

but when the best Californian player goes to play for a team, they don't put his face on a billboard all over all the cities in California. The most popular celebrity in LA is not Aaron Judge. Aaron Judge is from California. But in Japan, it's Otani. When I did an Aaron Judge home run tracker to see when he hit a 60 second, I think Meg said, Ben, this is pretty cool.

You could maybe do a radio show about this. Then I did one for Shohei, and they flew a camera crew up and interviewed me for hours. Yeah. Like, it's just different. It's not like, it's qualitatively different. Like, it's a different order of magnitude. And so I think he's kind of a separate deal.

He could be worse by a lot, and still the crazy franchise altering juice that you get. I mean, he wouldn't be so famous if he weren't so good. But I think he is head and shoulders above the rest of this list, and that his trade value is nearly like incalculable. Like, you could offer your whole team to the Dodgers, and they'd be like, I don't think so, guy.

Like, we need Shohei. And so I think from that sense, it's hard to argue with him not. I think Judge is a more interesting case. I think Meg, you will like this. Because I feel like the fact that surplus value is so easy makes it way overused. Surplus value is correlated to baseball value.

Totally. For sure. It's very correlated, in fact. Yeah. And sorry to interrupt you, but I think sometimes, and I'm not a like, let's all like bow at the altar of surplus value person, but I do think sometimes people are like, it doesn't matter. I'm like, well, okay, we can acknowledge that this is still a metric and it is useful when applied correctly. It's not like it is devoid of value. Very useful, yeah. It's like a big part of all my models, right?

True. Because I start by modeling out a top 200 or something stupid. And then I start honing in from there. And yeah, obviously, it's a huge input. But I guess what I would say is the point of baseball is not to have a bunch of these undervalued contracts. The point is to win. And the undervalued contracts are a really useful way of doing that, right?

Because you can get more than they cost and then you can spend that savings elsewhere. So here's like a theoretical argument for you. What if you had a player who was replacement level, but would pay you $30 million a year to play for you? Hmm, I'll take them. Right? But would you take 26 of them? You'd be very bad at baseball, but you'd be rich. So I think surplus value, you'd have to say yes, right?

Because we don't care how many wins they put up. We don't care how much money they spend. We only care about the translation between those two. Right. Bob Nutting is nutting right now listening to this hypothetical. Oh my god. That's so much worse than any joke I made this podcast. You can't with a podcast.

Should you say it? You can't. Maybe. But in any case, like that argument I think is pretty clearly silly, but it follows from the assumptions. I compared this to a guy I used to work with, and he came up with this really simple model for figuring out cheap and dear Portuguese bonds or something,

relative to each other. It's like, well, the ones that show up as having all this surplus value keep not making me win. That's because your model is very simple, my friend, and it doesn't actually capture the whole universe of this. To win the World Series, you kind of do need one of the big stars, right? And there aren't many of them. When's the last time that we had one where you couldn't say, well, they had a bunch of really good players? It's been a long time. And I think that because teams are very good

at eating their Wheaties overall, like they all know it. They all know how surplus value works. I don't, you don't call up a team and they're like, I don't know, like we don't really care what our guys get paid or how good they're likely to be. Doesn't sound right. That's, that's not, we've passed that behind now. But I feel like what the good teams are really good

at doing is knowing you got to eat your Wheaties and you got to know how easy it is to get those guys, and how good you are at developing them. But then you also need to go out and be a little spendy to get the scarce guys who can turn all the surplus value you've churned elsewhere into the very best guys. Judge is a good example. I actually don't think his contract is underwater,

which is crazy. I was looking at when he signed it and he was projected for like five and a half war this year. Just like, man, I remember thinking that's a lot. It's like half what he's gonna end up with. Double that, yeah. Yeah, to my model, his contract is actually like a bit above water, which is wild.

He's old and getting paid a lot of money for a long time. But also, come on. Aaron Judge makes your team so much better and he doesn't break you financially doing that. It's going to be great and you're going to be a lot more likely to win. It's a lot easier to win when you have guys like that. I think that it's pretty clear from if you just from looking at actual trades in the market, that teams know this.

So every time you have a trade where there's like a player with a notable concentration of war on one side, if you put that in a surplus model, surplus value model, a boring linear surplus value model, it would definitely be like the stars overrated every time. And yet teams keep doing these. So, look, maybe these teams are just stupid and never learning. But that doesn't seem that likely to me. They're run by pretty smart people. And even the smart teams do this stuff. That suggests to me that using this simplification

of the world is not completely explaining the way to run a team. And honestly, if you didn't know what surplus value was, and I told you, hey, all you need to know to run a baseball team is that if you pay someone less than their worth, that's all that matters. You'd be like, wait, really? That doesn't sound right. Don't you need to know like way more stuff about baseball? And you'd be like, no, no, no, I've got this one model. It's perfect. Like, clearly a lot more goes into it. Yeah. I think that's basically the point

that I'm trying to get across is like, this is a very useful simplification of baseball. It is not enough. Like, if it were enough, then you could play the 26 replacement level millionaires paying you and win, but you can't. And so once you acknowledge that, you gotta actually think about how to put

the best team on the field, given your constraints. And really your objective is like, you know, wins, playoff odds, that kind of stuff, not money. Money is a useful lever to get there, but it's not the only one. Yeah, Judge could have been more famous and popular in California if Arson Judge had been headed to San Francisco, but that was not the case. But this is, I guess, the classic example of yeah, in what corner of the multiverse will Aaron Judge actually get traded by the Yankees? Can we even come up with a scenario where Aaron Judge could conceivably be traded? It turns out that all of the Steinbrenner's

money was Will Pond style in a Ponzi scheme or something. And they just, they have to just shed payroll. And so, I mean, I think even then they'd shed others like probably, yeah, like I think they would just say this would be too bad for us to get her to judge. I mean, that's, that's kind of the silliness of this whole thing. Yeah. you know, we're talking about, like, who these best players are, but it's all theoretical, right? Like, and also, even if the Yankees did offer Aaron Judge, clearly teams would love to have him. But there's no trade like that to compare to

because when guys like Judge get moved, something's wrong. Something's gone wrong somewhere. And so we just don't have a good data set for what this would look like. It's all really guesswork. But let me put it a different way. If I said Aaron Judge was the 40th best trade value in baseball, like come on, come on.

No, he's not. The Mariners would trade Logan Gilbert for Aaron Judge. I understand that they're budget motivated,ers would trade Logan Gilbert for Aaron Judge. I understand that they're budget motivated, but if they could just have Aaron Judge, they would figure it out. Yeah, or Jerry would try to, I guess. But yeah, it would be like a last in first out situation if the bankrupt Steinbrenner's had to shed payroll. Ryan McMahon and his $16 million salary would be...

Yes, right. Those guys would get given away at extreme losses first. And I guess Judge, you know, it's kind of the classic example of a guy who's more valuable to this team because he's the captain and his homers might travel, but his captaincy probably wouldn't. I guess maybe in hockey it does, but probably not in baseball. I think that they'd work it out, you know? I do. I think they might work it out if that mattered.

Speaking of first in, last out, I'm curious. You know, we talk a lot as we're assembling this list about how, and we try to encourage readers to think about it this way. And I don't know that we've ever quite succeeded in this. But to sort of appreciate how much more tightly grouped the players at the bottom of the list are, both relative to one another and sort of that, you know, first 20 ranked guys, but also when you think about them in comparison to the honorable mentions who are just off of the list, right?

The guys who would be ranked 60th or 70th if we extended it that far. And so I actually want to ask you about the guys who didn't make the list this year and if there's anyone in particular from that honorable mention population who strikes you as sort of most likely to kind of make you regret not ranking them next year, I guess. Yeah. I actually have an easy number one for you and like a fun story with it. And so Nick Kurtz is number one. And Ben, this will relate back to me talking

about how cold Jacob Wilson is. So I sat down, I was just back from Norway. Dan had run me like a fresh, you know, fresh squeezed Zips as of 4th of July. Like after all the games were played that day, he reran the full fat, like heavy overnight Zips model and sent me a list of projections of like everyone.

I don't know, hundreds of players. Nick Kurtz had 116 WRC plus in the majors, pretty impressive, and Jacob Wilson had 136 WRC plus in the major leagues, outrageous. Like man, shortstop, how can he do it? He's a slap hitter, but maybe he is. And Jacob Wilson had 136 WRC plus in the major leagues. Outrageous. Like, man. Shortstop. How can he do it? He's a slap hitter.

But maybe he is. It's been months, and he's doing it. So cool. I start making up the list. Zips loves Jacob Wilson, by the way. And so I'm messing with this, putting in new data every day. And between July 5th, when I ran these numbers that were based on current major league stats,

and I don't know, July 19th or whatever I was like, oh, the list is pretty good. Well, I guess we'll just go to now. In that intervening time, Jacob Wilson has a negative 13 WRC+, which has dropped his from 136 to 119. Wow. So when I compiled the initial list based on the most recent data about each player, Jacob Wilson was like, I don't really believe it because I don't know,

it doesn't seem right to me, but it's happening. In that same timeframe, July 5th to present, Nick Kurtz has a 314 WRC plus, which has raised his on the season from 116 boarding to 161, amazing. Yeah. And so I was like, I'd be updating the list, but the projections are old, right? Like Dan's not running this heavy model for me every day.

Updating the list, like going through it, trying to, feeding in the new performance to change people's stats, but it never changes much in one day. And I'd be like, man, I was watching the A's last night and Nick Kurtz had a few doubles. I checked the next day, I was like, I was watching the A's last night and he had like a double and a homer in that day. That'd be like, man, I was watching the A's last night. Nick Kurtz had a few doubles. I checked the next day, I was like, watching the A's last night and he had like a double and a homer in that game. I was watching the A's that night and I think he walked three times. You know, you just keep like looking at this and it's like, this guy is having a really good season and he's having a really good few weeks and he kept clicking up the list, clicking up the list. And then I like, I should have had him over Wilson, I think basically, but it's really hard when you've,

you've got the old, like the, not that old, you know, we one week old forecast that now look crazy because it's a third of this guy's major league performance. It's easier to do with Mizierowski where you're like, all right, well I watched him pitch and he looks like the greatest pitcher in baseball. So, okay. Whereas it's a lot harder with a hitter.

It's like, I don't know, every time that Kurt swings, I think he could strike out or hit a home run. It's just like very large and swings out of his shoes. So it's very hard to watch like a single outcome with a hitter and change your opinion much. It's much easier to watch it with a pitcher. And I think that made me a little lower on Kurt's than I should have been. Like if I had just woken up the Sunday before this list came out and been like, ah, panic, like, got to write the whole thing.

Kurtz definitely would have been on it. You got anchored to your past perception or the past projections at least. Yeah. You know, it's really funny. I've talked with Dan a little bit about like getting multiple points of time forecasts to try to de-anchor. And like I even did that this year, but the problem is that the anchoring, like, the things just keep changing. Yeah. They play almost every day is the thing about baseball. They play almost every day.

Yeah, so if you don't know that much about him yet, things can change really quickly. Chase Burns, I feel like, could easily make me look silly just because he's a super touted pitching prospect who had like an incredible minor league performance and then has been all over the place in the majors. Good kind of process stats, really bad outcome stats. I'm not going to feel like he made me look bad because, I mean, what was I going to do?

Like, he wasn't going to go much higher than like, this is a young player who might be amazing next year. I guess Jackson Holliday could make me look silly. I feel like I have a really tough time pegging where Jackson Holiday should go on things like these. Jose Soriano is a pitcher who I love. I think Jose Soriano is underrated. I feel like he's kind of got an angel a little bit and then it just feels like he's not putting it together. But actually, he's been really good on a rate basis for three years in a row. We're like very solid. He was a like decent reliever

and then he got better as a starter. And so maybe we should bet on this, but I just couldn't quite get there in the end. I feel like 40 to 70, honestly, I'm just not smart enough to tell the difference between these people and I would give up a lot to get a lot of these players. Are those the guys that you've gotten the most grief about

or the guys that you've given yourself the most grief about? And it's sort of silly that anyone would be upset about the rankings because it's like, how dare you say that this guy who will never get traded would bring back slightly more value than this other guy who will never get traded. It's all sort of silly, but I assume there's... Meg can probably concur.

Part of the reason that we do this is so that people will say that. I guess so. Yeah, that's part of the appeal is that people will be upset. Not that you want to make people upset, but they'll be passionate about it, let's say. And there's a pride in your players. Yeah. Yeah. You'll never please everyone.

Like, I would say that the name who I put on the list, who generated the most disagreement was Zach Wheeler, but it was in opposite directions. A lot of people were like, how is he not top 20? A lot of them were like, he's nowhere near the list. That's probably good. The players that gave me the most consternation,

it's hard to figure out fan consternation and fan graphs check consternation. It's hard to figure out fan consternation and fan graphs check consternation. Our readers are incredibly well informed, but in many different ways and that's why we do crowdsourcing. One of the toughest things about these projections is they're pretty good and they're pretty stable, but I sometimes have a hard time wrapping my head around how this is going to work without the player changing a lot.

I mean, the projections work really well like over big long aggregates and stuff. But I do wonder how well they'll do at someone like Pete Crow Armstrong, who models love and who swings at balls more often than any player in the majors. Like, just literally more often than anyone else. And way more often than anyone who's, you know, sustained major league performance for any period of time. He chases 45% of the pitches that's had strikes in this year. That's that's half of them. Like, it's really an outlier ish skill set. And I just like I understand that he has a great batting line this year

and he's an incredible defender. I I struggle to see that he's projected to accrue the same amount of value in the next five years as like Aaron Judge, who he's a little bit ahead of in the aggregate five-year forecasts. I could be wrong, but I will say that I had a lot of conversations with people who felt similarly,

which is like this is really useful, and you have to take of take it into account in the top end and like maybe the way that it works is that he cuts his chase rate by a ton, right? That he becomes a different player. That what the projections are seeing is this is how good this guy was in the minors and so good he's been in the majors. So he should be able to change these things.

I have too much like fear of guys who swing a lot at pitches outside the strike zone not panning out. I've done a poor job ranking these guys at times in the past. Either a poor job ranking them or a correct way of reflecting the industry and reflecting current views. And then things didn't pan out. Michael Harris is a good example of this that I've probably picked on too much today, but look, he's having a bad year. I still like Michael Harris quite a bit. But sometimes if you swing too much at balls, like you just have a really bad offensive season. Michael Harris had a 137 WRC plus as a rookie. That's very impressive. That's like, specifically

exactly Pete Crowe Armstrong's WRC plus right now. It's really good. Hitters that good don't come around very often. But sometimes when their game is built around like lots and lots and lots of swings, it really can fall apart. And so that that was a really tough evaluation. I spoke a little bit about how I feel like I've devalued defense somewhat in my evaluation of these very high value players. I feel like teams don't spend as much for it on the open market. Like they,

they like their chances of getting it in cost control years from prospects in their system. And so they, they kind of shell out a little bit less for it. It's that's maybe not true when you're talking about this kind of defense, like the best defense in a league. And it's certainly not true when you're talking about somebody who's defense. Like, the best defense in a league. And it's certainly not true when you're talking about somebody who's batting 40% above league average. But I just think that my comfort with him continuing to be a plus hitter was just not quite there,

even though I could very easily be wrong on that. And so, I don't know, that's an evaluation that I think is gonna be really volatile. Like, if he is this good of a hitter next year, I'm too low. And if he kind of goes the route of a number of chase heavy guys in the past, then I was too high. I shaded his forecast down from what the raw model, quote unquote, raw model would say. And I also found a decent amount of disagreement when talking to various cross-checkers and sources, both at FanGraphs and on Teams, about that.

So it's just really tough. It's really tough to forecast someone like this who gets it done, but not in a very strange way. And not in a very strange way like, well, Aaron Judge, he just has so much power. Right? Like, it's a strange way. It's like, well, Pete Cromswell, he swings so much. It pitches outside the strikes zone. Wait a second. I mean, he has an incredible, like, kind of, paradisian get the ball, pull the ball in the air kind of skill, which is really interesting.

You don't see that a lot for guys who are so unchoosy in their swings. He's a very fascinating player. But one that I, as a, one place where I differ a lot from major league executives, like there's a lot of ones, like I don't know, there's good data sets, and I don't spend as long time looking at this, and I'm not as smart, but,

or I'm certainly not as baseball smart, but one place where I differ, I think a good amount, is I'll take more risk. I'm willing to be like a lot more, like bet on upside more, buy out of the money call options kind of deal, like try to hope for something really outlier-ish happening. This doesn't feel like that to me for whatever reason. Like I can't quite tell you why that is, but I love kind of betting on the

LA de la Cruz's and James Woods of the world. And for whatever reason, I have not been able to wrap my head around Pete Crowe Armstrong being that. Like I said, I may be very wrong on that. But this is a place where I don't even feel like it's risk aversion. It's just like the pattern sticks out to me so much as a person who does a lot of pattern matching. And I go, well, this doesn't really fit. Maybe it'll work, but I need to see it longer. Yeah. Speaking of Spencer Jones, which we already did. But yeah.

One other thing I meant to say about the high priced players placing so high is that in baseball, we know that you don't get paid what you deserve quote unquote per war. If, if you're just the best player in baseball, because if you did, then you'd be getting a hundred million dollars per year, right? Right. Right. Right.

Right. That doesn't happen. And so if you're Aaron judge and you're this good, then you're by definition pretty underpaid, even as a highly paid player. And obviously you're projecting in decline over the long-term and you look at his age and everything. And so when he signed the contract, they were banking on yes, okay. He'll be underpaid for the first few years

and then he'll be overpaid quote unquote for the rest of the years and it'll more or less even out as it often does, but he has defied any kind of aging curve thus far. And so he's just like the front loaded part is just lasting a lot longer than anyone figured it would and has been even better than anyone thought it would. And so he is highly paid, but also underpaid. And he's been so good that now you can forecast the decline and still just like shrug at $40

million because like he could be a lot worse than this and still be worth every penny of that. So yeah, Meg, Meg made me change the wording of this to a better one. But I had talked about trading for a random star. Yeah. And I what I really mean is like an one of an assortment of pair players who reach free agency at star level, and may or may not still be stars. A good example is that like, that if you were to sign Trevor Story right now, you'd be like, oh, well,

he hasn't really played as well as we thought he would when he signed his contract. So presumably, that should change your estimation. I don't think that often you'll have a guy like, I don't say, Max Fried sign a contract in February, and then in June, everyone's like, man, he's really valuable. Why didn't we see that? He should definitely be top trade value list.

But a lot of the guys here have gotten paid, but our opinions of how good they're going to be have changed since then. Yeah. Like Bobby Witt signed a very competitive, uh, market rate kind of contract. That's going to pay him, you know, pretty solidly over the next five years, 20, 26 to 2030, before he has a chance to knock out $27 million a year. Well, he signed that contract before he had 10 win season. And the estimates of his skill have changed massively since then. Same deal with Judge. Like we've gone way out of what we thought

Judge was going to do with his contract. Like we were talking about earlier, he's going to hit double his projected 2025. And that was from one of the highest projections in the game. Cal Raleigh signed what felt like a team discount extension, buying out some years, and then turned into Babe Ruth for three months. You need something to change your opinion of these guys

after they sign the market contract, I feel like, for them to really fit in here all that well, but it definitely happens. Our estimation of players is changing all the time, and plenty of guys who sign free agent contracts then do not do as well as we anticipated, and plenty do better. One thing that makes all of this quite challenging is, yeah, we're never going to know. And we'll especially never know with these players. Like you said, it's theoretical. I feel like it makes a lot of sense. But, you know, that's me and that's what I convince the people I talk to on teams of.

And we'll never... I think it is one of the kinds of things that we did get a good chance to see that a player like Juan Soto, even without a ton of years of team control left, can be super high on the list. Yeah. We will not get a chance to see what it's like for Shohei Itani to get traded. They're like one Soto, even without a ton of years of team control left can be super high on the list. We will not get a chance to see what it's like for Shohei Otani to get traded, but that's theoretical. It's just not happening.

We'll not get a chance to see what it looks like for the very best players in the game to get traded on their big free agent deals. I just don't see how it happens. Sure give us something to write about on Thursday though. Yes. Sorry. If there's anyone else you want to bring up as we close out here that you agonized over or that you stuffed on your list and wanted to salute here, feel free. The only other guy I wanted to single out to ask you about was not one oriel you said you struggled with Jackson Holl Holiday, but Adley

Rutchman. Yes. Yeah. You had Adley 32 just ahead of another catcher, William Contreras. And I do not know what to make of Adley Rutchman these days. So that seems like it would have been difficult to decide. I would like to talk about him and the guy who placed right in front of him, Cattell Marte. And I think that should just about do it.

So with Rutchman and William Contreras, I think are pretty similar players. I ranked them right next to each other, like you said. I like grouping players by positions. I'm kind of ranking within the positions and then kind of splitting the tiers out from there. Actually, the guy got that from Meg, and it's worked very well. So I had kind of Kirk,

Alhundra Kirk, Rutchman, and Contreras as like, you know, really good catchers, not the best two. Best two being Will Smith and Kal Raleigh. And I kept moving them kind of down the list. Rutchman is a particularly difficult one because, you know, he feels like he could be an MVP, but he has been quite bad recently. I think in the end, if I were to read you the list right now, you know, four days after I did the initial one, uh, I would probably have Retchman and Contreras lower. I think that they, in the end, they anchored to Kirk a little bit because I had all these three catchers together and took me so long to move Kirk over Marte that I didn't have time to then separate Retchman and Contreras and move them down. Honestly,

like this part of the list is so jumbled with names that it's all the same. It's not all the same, but it's all really close. Like the difference between 32 and 42 is still not very high. The thing that is the question with Rutchman is how quickly do you think he could get back to being one of those really difference-making players? The projections all think that he is still.

And the batted ball quality is there this year. It really does feel like if you play Adelaide Retchman at catcher for your team, like you're getting a big differentiator from other teams that don't get to play Adelaide Retchman at catcher. I feel very unconfident about his spot here because it's like one of the toughest people in that he's both very uncertain in current value

and doesn't have a ton of years left of team control. So that makes it very tricky in that, like, you're gonna find out really quickly whether Adley Rutchman is, like, a top five catcher in baseball who is a big steal, or if he's just, like, a, I don't know, the 15th best catcher in baseball, well, like, time's gonna run out real fast and he'll be off the list next year. And honestly, he's probably heading off the list unless he has a great season, just because of the tyranny of declining years of team control. But yeah, I think that that was a really tough one. And if you told me that he goes 15 spots lower, I'd say maybe because those guys are

close. But one thing I do feel confident about is that he's not going to go 10 spots higher because of a test that I came up with during doing all this, which is would you rather have this guy or Cattela Marte? That test came up because I had Cattela Marte listed in the same group as Corey Seeger and Francisco Lindor when I asked, I don't know, a guy who I think is pretty good at this. I said, what do you think of this? He was like, would you really rather have

Corey Seeger, who's going to make twice as much money than Cattell Marte, who is the same player? And I was like, oh, yeah, maybe not. Cattell Marte is pretty good. And so then I was like, OK, so I need to move him up. And then I looked at the next guy ahead of this, and I was like, oh, I don't know. This is a nice player.

I think it was Brian Wu maybe. It's like, he's awesome. Like, he's gonna be like a three win dude for like the next four years and he's not gonna make that much. And it's like, yeah, but so is Cattell Marte. And also like Cattell Marte is like, gonna be a six win player this year

and he's making $17 million a year, which is like really low in the grand scheme of things. And so I kept just being like, I couldn't take this guy over, I could tell Marte. Right. So it became a really good pivot point, which is there is this one guy who right now is playing at a down-ballot MVP level. I don't think he's an MVP. It's really tough.

There's some really good players, but a down-ballot MVP level, he's in the back end of his prime right now. He's 31. He'll be around for a while. He's not making too much money. Like he's making an amount of money that every team could easily pay and continue building their roster with. It's really hard to convince yourself that a player is better than Cattell Marte unless they are like a star, unless there's something really stand out about them. Maybe they're around for forever, for like a crazy good deal and are above average. Alejandro Kirk in the end got over that line

for me because he's going to be around for forever. He's the sixth best catcher in baseball since he's come up. He's got a pretty high floor. He's been good at catching every year since he's been up. The deal's really good. It's $12 million a year for a long time. Similarly, like Hunter Green, I was like, OK, I could do this. But I think this check is really good, that if you don't think your guy is like a true standout, he probably doesn't deserve to be ahead of Cattell Marte. And I came in the list without that check.

And I'm very thankful to the anonymous source who is like, well, you can't list these two players together. They're not the same. Because that really got me onto a check that I used. And I'd basically say everyone outside of 31, which is where I had Marte, and even some of the injury players above that, who I was like, I don't know where to put these guys,

I'd feel OK if you moved them around the list a lot. But if you put those guys very far ahead of Cattell Marte, I'd be like, you gotta think about this. I don't think you're being objective. Look at this guy's results and try to, try to build the list again, please. Yeah. And I have to go into the Diamondbacks Clubhouse

and be like, do you understand how important you were to one of the most important exercises that Fairgraffs does the entire year? He's gonna be like, what are you talking about? Well, it's because you're so good, you see. Yeah. He's gonna be like, what are you talking about? It's because you're so good, you see. Yeah, it's because you're excellent. You could call it the Martaste test.

Oh boy. How does that work? Wow. That's so much worse than anything I've ever come up with. I am shocked. I am a bad influence on you, Ben. I don't know. I was thinking, because Bill James had the Keltner test

for the Keltner list, it was like to determine Hall of Fame worthiness based on Ken Keltner. And so I was thinking then you could have the Kettel test, but then I thought, no, I can do better or worse. Maybe both at the same time. Maybe both. But you did well as always in this exercise and your trade value to fan crafts is high.

So thank you very much for doing it yet again and for talking to us today. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on. So I can talk. I would talk a lot about this. So I love getting a chance to do it. You just did.

It's not, that's not a hypothetical. Even if the list itself is. That's real. Well, amusingly, all of the praise of Nick Kurtz in this episode came before Friday night when Kurtz had one of the best offensive games of all time. Six for six with four homers, a double and a single If you are scoring at home, that's 19 total bases Which ties Sean Green for the most ever. Scored six runs, drove in eight, even AAA Spencer Jones wishes he could have a game like that. So Ben probably ruin the respective rankings of Nick Kurtz and Jacob Wilson

even more than before. And hey, that's one way to get that rookie war production up. Nick Kurtz adding .7 war to that total all by his lonesome in a single day. I know a lot of people call Nick Kurtz big Amish because he's from Amish country in Pennsylvania. I like calling him the Colonel, Colonel Kurtz. One way or another, heck of a game. I remember one of Meg's preseason predictions being that Nick Kurtz would outwore Travis Bazzana, looking like a good call.

So we salute Nick Kurtz, and we salute those of you who have supported the podcast on Patreon, which of course you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, as have the following five listeners who have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going,

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to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Sophical music Effectively wild Effectively wild

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